Wordpress Schema.org Markup. What value does it add?

Question

I've been adding all the "recommended" schema.org markup to my sites for awhile now. Most of the schema markup adds value to google searches.

There's other markup though that I've been using and I'm not really sure who actually uses it (search engines, other sites, etc).

Specifically, for this question, I'm wondering about the wordpress related schema.org markup:

Header: <header itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/WPHeader">

Sidebar: <aside itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/WPSideBar">

Footer: <footer itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/WPFooter">

Does anyone know what the purpose of this markup is? Does it add SEO value? If so how and where? Thanks!

Answer 1

The WP in their URLs is not related to WordPress, it’s just a shorthand for WebPage. These types all have the type WebPageElement as parent.

In my opinion, using WebPageElement or one of its sub-types (like WPHeader etc.) is pointless for general web pages (there are some special cases and non-HTML contexts where it might make sense to use these types). It can even be hindering to have these types, because it’s not (easily) possible to provide content in WPHeader/WPFooter/WPSideBar as value for a property that should belong to the parent WebPage item (e.g., if your WPFooter contains a license statement, the license property would specify the license for the WPFooter, not for the WebPage).

Neither Google Search (doc.) nor Bing (doc.) nor Yandex (doc.) document any feature that would make use of these types.

Answer 2

This is not something that WordPress core adds, it is something that themes add, and to know why, you will have to ask the authors.